Michael Winner sobs on new TV show

He pulls no punches in his acerbic restaurant reviews but seemingly hard-hearted
Michael Winner will be seen to be a real softie when he blubs in a new TV series.

Winner, who directed stars such as Marlon Brando and Charles Bronson in his earlier film career, was reduced to tears by a heart-breaking tale while filming his forthcoming show Michael Winner’s Dining Stars.

Michael Winner will be seen as a real softie when he cries in a new TV series

In scenes to be broadcast on ITV1 next week, Winner said the story of a Lancashire woman whose young son has a life-threatening heart condition and whose daughter has cerebral palsy “hit me very strongly suddenly”.

His emotional episode comes in the wake of a wave of prominent male figures – including Prime Minister Gordon Brown , former Labour spin doctor Alistair Campbell and pop singer Peter Andre – who have been caught on camera crying.

But Winner’s emotional outpouring is only short-lived and the show sees him on typically scathing form, branding the north of England an “alien country” and claiming northerners are “incapable of cooking”.

He makes these comments before being sent to Lancashire to judge two people on their home cooking for the new show.

Travelling there in a private helicopter, he says: “The north is not a place I frequently go to, it is an alien country, it is another land, but it is beautiful. The people are nice, the people are very nice, but they provide food that is absolutely pathetic and they are incapable of cooking, so, I must say, where I am going does not totally thrill me.”

It is there that he meets Justine Forest, who invites him to eat with her family, and as he eats her home-cooked food he finds out about the family’s struggle.

Awarding her one of his ‘dining stars’ while in an old cinema, he starts crying and says: “There was something there you don’t get in restaurants. You don’t get heart and you don’t get warmth such as I saw in your house. Thank you for having me, it was an incredible experience.”